Demonology and Devil-lore Part 46

There are some intimations in the Slavonic version which look as if it might have belonged to some Paulician or other half-gnostic theory that the temptation of Noraita (Eve II.), and her alienation from her husband, were meant to prevent the repopulation of the Earth. [206]

The next attempt of the Devil, as agent of the Elohistic creation, to ruin the race of man, introduces us to another form of animalism which has had a large expression in Devil-lore. It is related in rabbinical mythology that when, as is recorded in Gen. ix. 20, Noah was planting a vineyard, the Devil (Asmodeus) came and proposed to join him in the work. This having been agreed to, this evil partner brought in succession a sheep, a lion, and a hog, and sacrificed them on the spot. The result was that the wine when drunk first gave the drinker the quality of a sheep, then that of a lion, and finally that of a hog. [207] It was by this means that Noah was reduced to swinish inebriation. There followed the curses on those around him, which, however drunken, were those of a father, and reproduced on the cleansed world all the dooms which had been p.r.o.nounced in Eden.

If the date of this legend could be made early enough, it would appear to be a sort of revenge for this temptation of Noah to drunkenness that Talmudic fable shows Asmodeus brought under bondage to Solomon, and forced to work on the Temple, by means of wine. Asmodeus had dug for himself a well, and planted beside it a tree, so making for himself a pleasant spot for repose during his goings to and fro on earth. But Solomon's messenger Benaja managed to cover this with a tank which he filled with wine. Asmodeus, on his return, repeated to himself the proverb, 'Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise' (Prov. xx. 1); yet, being very thirsty, he drank, fell asleep, and when he awoke found himself loaded with chains.

However, after working for a time for Solomon, he discovered that king's weaknesses and played upon them. Solomon was so puffed up with a sense of his power that he accepted a challenge from his slave (Asmodeus) to show his superiority without the a.s.sistance of his magic ring, and without keeping his compet.i.tor in bonds. No sooner was Asmodeus free, and in possession of the ring, than he transported Solomon four hundred miles away, where he remained for a long time among the seductive beauties of the Courts of Naamah, Rahab, and other she-devils. Meanwhile the Devil, a.s.suming the form of Solomon, sat on his throne, and became the darling of his Queen and concubines.

The Devil of Wine and strong drink generally has a wide representation in folklore. We find him in the bibulous Serpent of j.a.pan, who first loses his eight heads metaphorically, and then literally from the first of Swords-men. The performances of Mephistopheles in Auerbach's Cellar are commemorated in its old frescoes, and its motto: 'Live, drink, carouse, remembering Faust and his punishment: it came slowly, but was in ample measure.' Thuringian legends relate that the Devil tries to stop the building of churches by casting down the stones, but this may be stopped by the builders promising to erect a winehouse in the same neighbourhood. An old English legend relates that a great man's cellar was haunted by devils who drank up his wine. On one occasion a barrel was marked with holy water, and the devil was found stuck fast on it.

Gluttony, both in eating and drinking, has had its many personifications. The characteristics of the Hunger demons are travestied in such devils as these, only the diabolical, as distinguished from the demonic element, appears in features of luxuriousness. The contrast between the starveling saints of the early Church and the well-fed friars of later times was a frequent subject of caricature, as in the accompanying example (Fig. 30) from the British Museum, fourteenth century (MS. Arundel), where a lean devil is satisfying himself through a fattened friar. One of the most significant features of the old legend of Faust is the persistence of the animal character in which Mephistopheles appears. He is an ugly dog--a fit emblem of the scholar's relapse into the canine temper which flies at the world as at a bone he means to gnaw. Faust does not like this genuine form, and bids the Devil change it. Mephistopheles then takes the form of a Franciscan friar; but 'the kernel of the brute'

is in him still, and he at once loads Faust's table with luxuries and wines from the cellars of the Archbishop of Salzburg and other rich priests. The prelates are fond of their bone too. When Mephistopheles and Faust find their way into the Vatican, it is to witness carousals of the Pope and his Cardinals. They s.n.a.t.c.h from them their luxuries and wine-goblets as they are about to enjoy them. Against these invisible invaders the holy men bring their crucifixes and other powers of exorcism; and it is all snarling and growling--canine priest against puppy astrologer. Nor was it very different in the history of the long contention between the two for the big bone of Christendom.

The l.u.s.t of Gold had its devils, and they were not different from other types of animalism. This was especially the case with such as represented money, extorted from the people to supply wealth to dissolute princes and prelates. The giants of Antwerp represent the power of the pagan monarchs who exacted tribute; but these were replaced by such guardians of tribute-money as the Satyr of our picture (Fig. 31), which Edward the Confessor saw seated on a barrel of Danegeld,

Vit un deable saer desus Le tresor, noir et hidus.

There are many good fables in European folklore with regard to the miser's gold, and 'devil's money' generally, which exhibit a fine instinct. A man carries home a package of such gold, and on opening it there drop out, instead of money, paws and nails of cats, frogs, and bears--the latter being an almost personal allusion to the Exchange. A French miser's money-safe being opened, two frogs only were found. The Devil could not get any other soul than the gold, and the cold-blooded reptiles were left as a sign of the life that had been lived.

In the legends of the swarms of devils which beset St. Anthony we find them represented as genuine animals. Our Anglo-Saxon fathers, however, were quite unable to appreciate the severity of the conflict which man had to wage with the animal world in Southern countries and in earlier times. Nor had their reverence for nature and its forms been crushed out by the pessimist theory of the earth maintained by Christianity. Gradually the representation of the animal tempters was modified, and instead of real animal forms there were reported the bearded b.e.s.t.i.a.lities which surrounded St. Guthlac and St. G.o.dric. The accompanying picture (Fig. 32) is a group from Breughel (1565), representing the devils called around St. James by a magician. These grotesque forms will repay study. If we should make a sketch of the same kind, only surrounding the saint with the real animal shapes most nearly resembling these nondescripts, it would cease to be a diabolical scene.

For beastliness is not a character of beasts; it is the arrest of man. It is not the picturesque donkey in the meadow that is ridiculous, but the donkey on two feet; not the bear of zoological gardens that is offensive morally, but the rough, who cannot always be caged; it is the two-legged calf, the snake pretending to be a man, the ape in evening dress, who ever made the problem of evil at all formidable. It was insoluble until men had discovered as Science that law of Evolution which the ancient world knew as Ethics.

A Hindu fable relates that the animals, in their migration, came to an abyss they could not cross, and that the G.o.ds made man as a bridge across it. Science and Reason confirm these ancient instincts of our race. Man is that bridge stretching between the animal and the ideal habitat by which, if the development be normal, all the pa.s.sions pa.s.s upward into educated powers. Any pause or impediment on that bridge brings all the animals together to rend and tear the man who cannot convey them across the abyss. A very slight arrest may reveal to a man that he is a vehicle of intensified animalism. The l.u.s.t of the goat, the pride of the peac.o.c.k, the wrath of the lion, beautiful in their appropriate forms, become, in the guise of a man uncontrolled by reason, the vices which used to be called possession, and really are insanities.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THOUGHTS AND INTERPRETATIONS.

I lately heard the story of a pious negro woman whose faith in h.e.l.l was sorely tried by a sceptic who asked her how brimstone enough could be found to burn all the wicked people in the world. After taking some days for reflection, the old woman, when next challenged by the sceptic, replied, that she had concluded that 'every man took his own brimstone.' This humble saint was unconscious that her instinct had reached the finest thought of Milton, whose Satan says 'Myself am h.e.l.l.' Marlowe's Mephistopheles also says, 'Where we are is h.e.l.l.' And, far back as the year 633, the holy man Fursey, who believed himself to have been guided by an angel near the region of the d.a.m.ned, related a vision much like the view of the African woman. There were four fires--Falsehood, Covetousness, Discord, Injustice--which joined to form one great flame. When this drew near, Fursey, in fear, said, 'Lord, behold the fire draws near me.' The angel answered, 'That which you did not kindle shall not burn you.'

Such a.s.sociation of any principle of justice, even in form so crude, has become rare enough in Christendom to excite applause when it appears, though the applause has about it that infusion of the grotesque which one perceives when gallery-G.o.ds cheer the actor who heroically declares that a man ought not to strike a woman. When we go back to the atmosphere of Paganism we find that retribution had among them a real meaning. Nothing can be in more remarkable contrast than the disorderly characterless h.e.l.l of Christendom, into which the murderer and the man who confuses the Persons of the G.o.dhead alike burn everlastingly in most inappropriate fires, and the Hades of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, where every punishment bears relation to the offence, and is limited in duration to the degree of the offence.

'The Egyptians,' says Herodotus (ii. 123), 'were the first who a.s.serted that the soul of man is immortal, and that when the body perishes it enters into some other animal, constantly springing into existence; and when it has pa.s.sed through the different kinds of terrestrial, marine, and aerial beings, it again enters into the body of a man that is born, and that this revolution is made in three thousand years.' Probably Plato imported from Egypt his fancy of the return of one dead to relate the scenes of heaven and h.e.l.l, Er the Armenian (Republic, x. 614) suggesting an evolution of Rhampsinitus (Herod. ii. 122), who descended to Hades alive, played dice with Ceres, and brought back gold. The vision of Er represents a terrible h.e.l.l, indeed, but those punished were chiefly murderers and tyrants. They are punished tenfold for every wrong they had committed. But when this punishment is ended, each soul must return to the earth in such animal form as he or she might select. The animals, too, had their choice. Er saw that the choice was generally determined by the previous earthly life,--many becoming animals because of some spite derived from their experience. 'And not only did men pa.s.s into animals, but I must also mention that there were animals tame and wild who changed into one another, and into corresponding human natures, the good into the gentle, the evil into the savage, in all sorts of combinations.' Sly Plato! Such is his estimate of what men's selections of their paradises are worth!

Orpheus chose to be a swan, hating to be born of woman, because women murdered him; Ajax became a lion and Agamemnon an eagle, because they had suffered injustice from men; Atalanta would be an athlete, and the jester Thersites a monkey; and Odysseus went about to find the life of a private gentleman with nothing to do. If Plutarch's friend Thespesius had pondered well this irony of Plato, he would hardly have brought back from his visit to Hades the modification that demons were provided to a.s.sign the animal forms in which souls should be born again on earth. They could hardly have done for the wicked anything worse than Plato shows them doing for themselves. But the meaning of Plutarch is the same. Thespesius sees demons preparing the body of a viper for Nero to be born into, since it was said the young of that reptile destroy their mother at birth.

Among the Persians the idea of future rewards and punishments exceeds the exactness of the Koran--'Whoso hath done an atom of justice shall behold it, and whoso hath done an atom of injustice shall behold it.' The Persian Sufis will even subdivide the soul rather than that any good act should go down with the larger gross of wickedness. Sadi tells of a vision where a man was seen in h.e.l.l, all except one foot, which was twined with flowers. With all his wickedness the man had with that foot shoved a bundle of hay within reach of a weary ox.

But while Persian poets--Sufis, enn.o.bling the old name Sophist--preserved thus a good deal of the universalism of Parsaism, a Mohammedanism hard as the Scythians who brought it turned the heart of the people in that country to stone. In the Dresden Library there is an illuminated Persian MS., thought to be seven hundred years old, which has in it what may be regarded as a portrait of Ahriman and Iblis combined. He is red, has a heavy beard and moustache, and there is a long dragon's crest and mane on his head. He wears a green and blue skirt about his loins. His tongue rolls thirstily between his cruel teeth. He superintends a number of fish-like devils which float in a lake of fire, and swallow the d.a.m.ned. Above this scene are the glorified souls, including the Shah sitting cross-legged on his rug, who look down on the tortures beneath with evident satisfaction. Apparently this is the only amus.e.m.e.nt which relieves the ennui of their heaven.

If anything could make a rational man believe in a fiend-principle in the universe it would be the suggestion of such pictures, that men have existed who could conceive of happiness enjoyed in view of such tortures as these. This and some similar pictures in the East--for instance, that in the Temple of Horrors at Wuchang, China--are absolutely rayless so far as any touch of humanity is concerned. Are the Shah and his happy fellow-inspectors of tortures really fiends? In the light of our present intelligence they may seem so. Certainly no person of refined feeling could now expect to attain any heaven while others were in h.e.l.l. But it would be possible, if persons could believe that many of those around them are not men and women at all, but fiends in human shape. These ferocious h.e.l.ls are referable to a period when all who incurred the sentences of princes or priests were seen as mere masks of devils; they were only ascribed human flesh that they may suffer. The dogma of h.e.l.l was doomed from the moment that the d.a.m.ned were supposed to be really human.

Were those who killed the martyrs of heresy, for instance, to return to the world and look upon those whom they pierced, they could never recognise them. Were they to see the statues of Bruno, Huss, Cranmer, Servetus, the names and forms would not recall to them the persons they slew. They would be shocked if told that they had burned great men, and would surely answer, 'Men? We burned no men. The Devil came among us calling himself Huss, and we made short work with him; he reappeared under several aliases--Bruno, Servetus, Spinoza, Voltaire: sometimes we burned him, at other times managed to make him miserable, thank G.o.d! But we were not hurting real men, we were saving them.'

Around such ideas grew our yet uncivilised Codes of Law. In England, anno 1878, men are refused as jury-men if they will not say, 'So help me G.o.d!' on the ground that an atheist cannot have a conscience. Only let him really be without conscience, and call himself a christian when he is not, and courts receive the selfish liar with respect. The old clause of the death-sentence--'instigated thereto by the Devil'--has been dropped in the case of murderers, however; and that is some gain. Torture by fire of the worst murderer for one day would not be permitted in Christendom. Belief in h.e.l.l-fire outlasts it for a little among the ignorant. But what shall be said of the educated who profess to believe it?

The Venerable Bede relates that, in the year 696, a Northumbrian gentleman, who had died in the beginning of the night, came to life and health in the morning, and gave an account of what he had seen overnight. He had witnessed the conventional tortures of the d.a.m.ned, but adds--'Being thus on all sides enclosed with enemies and darkness, and looking about on every side for a.s.sistance, there appeared to me, on the way that I came, as it were, the brightness of a star shining amidst the darkness, which increased by degrees,'--but we need not go on to the anti-climax of this vision.

This star rising above all such visions belongs to the vault of the human Love, and it is visible through all the Ages of Darkness. It cannot be quenched, and its fiery rays have burnt up mountains of iniquity.

'In the year 1322,' writes Flogel, after the 'Chronicon Sampetrinum Erfurtense,' 'there was a play shown at Eisenach, which had a tragical enough effect. Markgraf Friedrich of Misnia, Landgraf also of Thuringia, having brought his tedious warfare to a conclusion, and the country beginning now to revive under peace, his subjects were busy repaying themselves for the past distresses by all manner of diversions; to which end, apparently by the Sovereign's order, a dramatic representation of the Ten Virgins was schemed, and at Eisenach, in his presence, duly executed. This happened fifteen days after Easter, by indulgence of the Preaching Friars. In the 'Chronicon Sampetrinum' stands recorded that the play was enacted in the Bear Garden (in horto ferarum) by the Clergy and their Scholars. But now, when it came to pa.s.s that the Wise Virgins would give the foolish no oil, and these latter were shut out from the Bridegroom, they began to weep bitterly, and called on the Saints to intercede for them; who however, even with Mary at their head, could effect nothing from G.o.d; but the Foolish Virgins were all sentenced to d.a.m.nation. Which things the Landgraf seeing and hearing, he fell into a doubt, and was very angry; and said 'What then is the Christian Faith, if G.o.d will not take pity on us for intercession of Mary and all the Saints?' In this anger he continued five days; and the learned men could hardly enlighten him to understand the Gospel. Thereupon he was struck with apoplexy, and became speechless and powerless; in which sad state he continued, bedrid, two years and seven months, and so died, being then fifty-five.'

In telling the story Carlyle remarks that these 'Ten Virgins at Eisenach are more fatal to warlike men than aeschylus' Furies at Athens were to weak women.' Even so, until great-hearted men rose up at Eisenach and elsewhere to begin the work destined to prove fatal alike to heartless Virgins and Furies. That star of a warrior's Compa.s.sion, hovering over the foolish Friars and their midnight Gospel, beams far. The story reminds me of an incident related of a mining district in California, where a rude theatre was erected, and a company gave, as their first performance, Oth.e.l.lo. When the scene of Desdemona's suffocation approached, a stalwart miner leaped on the stage, and pulling out his six-shooter, said to the Moor, 'You d.a.m.ned n.i.g.g.e.r! if you touch that woman I'll blow the top of your head off!' A dozen roughs, clambering over the footlights, cried, 'Right Joe! we'll stand by you!' The manager met the emergency by crying, 'Don't shoot, boys! This play was wrote by Bill Shakespear; he's an old Californian, and it's all in fun!' Had this Moor proceeded to roast Desdemona in fire with any verisimilitude, it is doubtful if the manager could have saved him by an argument reminding the miners that such was the divine way with sinners in the region to which most of them were going. The top of that theologic h.e.l.l's head is not very safe in these days when human nature is unchained with all its six-shooters, each liable to be touched off by fire from that Star revolving in the sphere of Compa.s.sion.

Day after day I gazed upon Michael Angelo's 'Last Judgment' in the Sistine Chapel. The artist was in his sixtieth year when Pope Clement VII. invited him to cover a wall sixty feet high and nearly as wide with a picture of the Day of Wrath. In seven years he had finished it. Clement was dead. Pope Paul IV. looked at it, and liked it not: all he could see was a vast number of naked figures; so he said it was not fit for the Sistine Chapel, and must be destroyed. One of Michael Angelo's pupils saved it by draping some of the figures. Time went on, and another Pope came who insisted on more drapery,--so the work was disfigured again. However, popular ridicule saved this from going very far, and so there remains the tremendous scene. But Popes and Cardinals always disliked it. The first impression I received from it was that of a complete representation of all the physical powers belonging to organised life; though the forms are human, every animal power is there, leaping, crouching, crawling,--every sinew, joint, muscle, portrayed in completest tension and action. Then the eye wanders from face to face, and every pa.s.sion that ever crawled or prowled in jungle or swamp is pictured. The most unpleasant expressions seemed to me those of the martyrs. They came up from their graves, each bringing the instrument by which he had suffered, and offering it in witness against the poor wretches who came to be judged; and there was a look of self-righteous satisfaction on their faces as they witnessed the persecution of their persecutors. As for Christ, he was like a fury, with hand uplifted against the doomed, his hair wildly floating. The tortured people below are not in contrast with the blessed above; they who are in heaven look rather more stupid than the others, and rather pleased with the anguish they witness, but not more saintly. But gradually the eye, having wandered over the vast canvas, from the tortured Cardinal at the bottom up to the furious Judge,--alights on a face which, once seen, is never to be forgotten. Beautiful she is, that Mary beside the Judge, and more beautiful for the pain that is on her face. She has drawn her drapery to veil from her sight the anguish below; she has turned her face from the Judge,--does not see her son in him; she looks not upon the blessed,--for she, the gentle mother, is not in heaven; she cannot have joy in sight of misery. In that one face of pure womanly sympathy--that beauty transfigured in its compa.s.sionateness--the artist put his soul, his religion. Mary's face quenches all the painted flames. They are at once made impossible. The same universe could not produce both a h.e.l.l and that horror of it. The furious Jesus is changed to a phantasm; he could never be born of such a mother. If the Popes had only wished to hide the nakedness of their own dogmas they ought to have blotted out Mary's face; for as it now stands the rest of the forms are but shapes to show how all the wild forms and pa.s.sions of human animalism gather as a frame round that which is their consummate flower,--the spirit of love enshrined in its perfect human expression.

So was it that Michael Angelo could not serve two masters. Popes might employ him, but he could not do the work they liked. 'The pa.s.sive master lent his hand to the vast soul that o'er him planned.' He could not help it. The lover of beauty could not paint the Day of Wrath without setting above it that face like a star which shines through its unreality, burns up its ugliness, and leaves the picture a magnificent interpretation of the forms of nature and hopes of the world,--a cardinal hypocrite at the bottom, an ideal woman at the top.

Exhausted by the too-much glory of the visions of Paradise which he had seen, Dante came forth to the threshold opening on the world of human life, from which he had parted for a s.p.a.ce, and there sank down. As he lay there angels caused lilies to grow beneath and around him, and myrtle to rise and intertwine for a bower over him, and their happy voices, wafted in low-toned hymns, brought soft sleep to his overwrought senses. Long had he slumbered before the light of familiar day stole once more into those deep eyes. The angels had departed. The poet awoke to find himself alone, and with a sigh he said to himself, 'It is, then, all but a dream.' As he arose he saw before him a man of n.o.ble mien and shining countenance, habited in an Eastern robe, who returned his gaze with an interest equal to his own. Quickly the eyes of Dante searched the ground beside the stranger to see if he were shadowless: convinced thus that he was true flesh and blood, the Florentine thus addressed him:--

'Pilgrim, for such thou seemest, may we meet in simple human brotherhood? If, as thy garb suggests, thou comest from afar, perchance the friendly greeting, even of one who in his native city is still himself a pilgrim, may not be unwelcome.

'Heart to heart be our kiss, my brother; yet must I journey without delay to those who watch and wait for wondrous tidings that I bear.

'Friend! I hear some meaning deeper than thy words. If 'twere but as satisfying natural curiosity, answer not; but if thou bearest a burden of tidings glad for all human-kind, speak! Who art thou? whence comest, and with what message freighted?

'Arda Viraf is the name I bear; from Persia have I come; but by what strange paths have reached this spot know I not, save that through splendours of worlds invisible to mortal sense I have journeyed, nor encountered human form till I found thee slumbering on this spot.

'Trebly then art thou my brother! I too have but now, as to my confused sense it seems, emerged from that vast journey. Thou clearest from me gathering doubts that those visions were illusive. Yet, as even things we really see are often overlaid by images that lurk in the eye, I pray thee tell me something thou hast seen, so that perchance we may part with mutual confirmation of our vision.

'That gladly will I do. When the Avesta had been destroyed, and the sages of Iran disagreed as to the true religion, they agreed that one should be chosen by lot to drink the sacred draught of Vishtasp, that he might pa.s.s to the invisible world and bring intelligence therefrom. On me the lot fell. Beside the fire that has never gone out, surrounded by holy women who chanted our hymns, I drank the three cups--Well Thought, Well Said, Well Done. Then as I slept there rose before me a high stairway of three steps; on the first was written, Well Thought; on the second, Well Said; on the third, Well Done. By the first step I reached the realm where good thoughts are honoured: there were the thinkers whose starlike radiance ever increased. They offered no prayers, they chanted no liturgies. Above all was the sphere of the liberal. The next step brought me to the circle of great and truthful speakers: these walked in lofty splendour. The third step brought me to the heaven of good actions. I saw the souls of agriculturists surrounded by spirits of water and earth, trees and cattle. The artisans were seated on embellished thrones. Sublime were the seats of teachers, interceders, peace-makers; and the religious walked in light and joy with which none are satiated.

'Sawest thou the fairest of earth-born ladies--Beatrice?

'I saw indeed a lady most fair. In a pleasant grove lay the form of a man who had but then parted from earth. When he had awakened, he walked through the grove and there met him this most beautiful maiden. To her he said, 'Who art thou, so fair beyond all whom I have seen in the land of the living?' To him she replied, 'O youth, I am thy actions.' Can this be thy lady Beatrice?

'But sawest thou no h.e.l.l? no dire punishments?

'Alas! sad scenes I witnessed, sufferers whose h.e.l.l was that their darkness was amid the abodes of splendour. Amid all that glow one newly risen from earth walked shivering with cold, and there walked ever by his side a hideous hag. On her he turned and said, 'Who art thou, that ever movest beside me, thou that art monstrous beyond all that I have seen on earth?' To him she replied, 'Man, I am thy actions.'

'But who were those glorious ones thou sawest in Paradise?